Which spurred 'scotty from denman' to drop by and remind us that the ferry system that is still (kinda/sorta but maybe not) ours is much more than Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, return:

A large proportion of the Denman Island ferry workers have been offered packages by the dys-management so's, it seems, to be rid of them before the hated cable ferry is launched. There seems to be an increasing number of symptoms of political toxicity affecting the BC Liberals' and their minions at BC Ferries Services Inc, the freakish "privatized"---but not really---public ferry system. BCFS Inc is plainly nervous about its image, purging any potentially disgruntled workers (presumably to be replaced with a few happy, smiling deckhands) whose demeanours might augment those of disgruntled ferry-riders. The Corrigan twaddle is just another symptom. And the Comox Valley Echo newspaper has, a la Black Press' amity for its neo-right government, has (co-incidentally?) fluffed out more puffery by way of staff-writer Drew Penner's April 21 piece on the pending cable-ferry.

Penner shows a modicum of journalistic integrity by acknowledging the cable-ferry "hasn't been the most landmine-free build ever," referring to locals' fury at planned job-cuts (not including the early severances). Despite the BC Liberals' assertion that the ferries are arm's-length and "private", the rest of Penner's piece reads as much like propaganda as it does like advertisement. Perhaps only Islanders will get the irony Penner pens of BC Ferry's cable-ferry rationale to "maintain the same level of service locals have come to expect": fact is Denman and Hornby Islanders have come to expect reduced service like the three sailings recently eliminated, and the highest rate of fare increased of any BC Ferry run. With regard to questions about cable-ferry safety, Penner quotes BC Ferries as saying "We've got a proven track record for safety and reliability," never questioning how that could be before the cable-ferry is even launched. Great advertisement, excellent propaganda, Drew, but journalism? Nuh-uh, not much.

Too bad cuz I was wondering how Transport Canada's gonna certify this run with three of its six deckhands eliminated. I mean, what if there's a vehicle fire halfway across? Is three enough to take care of the fire, the ferry and the passengers all at the same time?

Resort to absurdism is symptomatic of an increasingly self-conscious, nervous government. It would only serve as extra proof if we could be apprised of caucus prayer sessions beseeching that the cable-ferry had better work as billed, and the ferries system in general had better start providing serviceable advertisement and propaganda---this absurdism is plainly getting old.

We've been spending a lot of time in the lab these days working on 'applied' projects.

Which is a long way from the old days where everything was discovery-based.

There are all kinds of differences between the two, the biggest of which is that there is no net underneath the discovery stuff.

There is also no blueprint, which means you really have to be on top of the thing to pull something meaningful out of the hat at the end.

Which is something that gets harder and harder to do if you are an experimentalist and an academic moving towards geezerhood.

Mostly because you increasingly spend parts of your 10,000 hours working on all that non-experimental stuff that academics do. Which is important institutionally, but it is also the kind of stuff that any self-respecting kid sneers at when they are in the throes of total obsession-hood.

Anyway...

We've still got one more pure discovery paper to get out with a former gradual student who was the real driver of the project.

And I'm pretty sure the paper is going to be good.

So.

This weekend I holed up in the subterranean blues room and did my best to get as obsessive as possible in an effort to get the thing ready to send out to the collaborators.

Which I've just done.

And, speaking of kidness and obsessiveness and all that....Boy have I ever listened to a lot of Green Day in the last 36 hours.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Next, the Cover, from, as it should be, a kid who is a Rancid fan in her bedroom...

_______You can see Mr. T. Armstrong and his always and forever DIY band power up the tune that he and B.J. Armstrong wrote more than 20 years ago on a front porch...Here.Because of this Green Day goes to Cleveland thing...And all that meant for the folks concerned at least... And, because the Geezers are planning to do a new (to us at least) GD tune at next week's gig, I fell down a bit of a Youtube hole earlier today while ostensibly working on the next paper....It's that business of bringing the kids up on stage that Armstrong does...Call it hokie if you like, but stuff like this just slays me...

Earlier we noted that John Gleeson of the small town Coast Reporter paper let us know that BC Ferries' latest CEO has been doing some most impressive shark jumping regarding the fares up/ridership down issue:

BC Ferries CEO and president Mike Corrigan says the public campaign against high ferry fares is keeping tourists away and could become “a self-fulfilling prophecy” that hurts coastal economies along with the ferry system they rely on...

And do not misunderstand Mr. Corrigan (who keeps right on jumping over the snapping jaws in Mr. Gleeson's) piece, because he really is implying that it's not the high fares that are decreasing ridership but instead he's flat out making stuff up about how it is people who are trying to roll back the fare increases who are the problem

And then, almost as if from nowhere, a superfine bit of puffed-up puffery in the Globe's 'Report on Business' told us just how great Mr. Corrigan is at his job because he once played junior hockey and now plays beer league hockey.

Still an intimidating and skilled hockey player, British Columbia Ferry Services Inc. president and CEO Mike Corrigan knew early that he wanted more than an unpredictable NHL career.

“I didn’t want to be a mediocre hockey player in my late 20s with nothing to fall back on,” said Mr. Corrigan, 53. “As good a junior hockey player that I was, I learned how insignificant you can be in life, fairly quickly.”

Since 2012, Mr. Corrigan has been the head coach at BC Ferries, one of the world’s biggest ferry systems, with 35 vessels, 47 terminals and 184,000 annual sailings that carry 20 million passengers and eight million vehicles. He joined the company in 2003, after being recruited for a job as vice-president of business development from an executive position with Westcoast Energy. “I immersed myself in the business,” he said, admitting he knew little about marine operations. By 2006, he was second-in-charge, as chief operating officer...

Given Mr. Corrigan's meteoric rise through the BC Ferries ranks during the age of the Gold Bricked 'n Laced Parachutist, I figured that even the a 30 paragraph-long puff-piece in the business boosterization supplement to Canada's (so-called) national newspaper would actually have at least an example or two of what actually makes Mr. Corrigan so good at his job.

As such, I searched through the entire 30 graphs and found one, kinda/sorta:

...As chief executive officer, he (Corrigan) remains on 24/7 alert, ready to stick-handle unpredictable events, such as on-board medical emergencies or vessel breakdowns. “The last thing I do at night and the first thing I do in the morning is look at my e-mail,” he said. “I’m more confident knowing than not knowing.”

Mr. Corrigan’s journey from ice to sea has been marked by astute self-awareness, a blue-collar backbone and the smarts to manage $3-billion in capital spending over the next 12 years while taking hits, not from defencemen, but teams of critics who scrutinize ferry fares and executive salaries, shipbuilding contracts and cancelled routes...

So.

There you have it.

Mr. Corrigan is fantastic at his job, despite the 'teams of critics' (like, say, these folks) who make a fuss about all that icky stuff that really and truly affects how the Ferries are run and how much it costs to run them that the Globe's fluffery pufferiest dared not touch, because...

_______Given that the Globe's scribe wouldn't go there...Here are reminders about real, actual longterm/systemic problems at the Golden Era's Frankensteinian Floating Baby regarding fares, offshore-built ferries, cancelled routes and executive salaries, none of which the good Mr. Corrigan has done anything significant to correct, either by reading Emails or lacing up the skates, as far as I can tell.And do you think, per chance, especially with the big proMedia puffery-in-pocket, that maybe the good Mr. Corrigan thought he could bamboozle the little guy from the Coast Reporter into starting up a 'blame the activists' newscycle meme?....Nahhhh...The fine media massage therapists at Ferry Corp. would never try to do something like that.... Right?Tip O' The Toqueto an Anon-O-Mouse on the comment thread attached to the original shark jumping post who gave us a heads up on the ROB puffery....There's a lot of good stuff in that thread, including facts and figures that appear to indicate that this is not the first time that Ms. Corrigan has made statements that are at odds with said facts and figures.
.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Today I learned that, when it comes to real policemen at least, Don Cherry just might be wrong.

Because, as Travis Gettys writes in Raw Story, a Swedish boy bandish quartet of cops who look to have more in common with Borje Salming and Inge Hammarstrom than Stan Jonathan and Terry O'Reilly can really get the job done.

Without anybody getting hurt:

Four vacationing Swedish police officers helped out after two homeless men began fighting on a New York City subway – and showed it’s possible to subdue violent suspects without hurting them.

The officers — Samuel Kvarzell, Markus Asberg, Eric Jansberger and Erik Naslund — were riding an uptown No. 6 train Wednesday on their way to see “Les Miserables” when they responded to the subway driver’s call for help, reported the New York Post.

The video shows one of the brawlers sitting calmly on the floor, flanked by two of the Swedish police officers, while two others kneel on the other man – who is more unruly – to hold him face-down on the floor.

“How do you feel?” one of the officers asks the seated man, who says he feels fine.

The other man struggles, but the pair of officers calmly keep him pinned to the floor.

“I can’t breathe,” he screams, as he rises occasionally from the floor but is unable to escape.

BC Ferries CEO and president Mike Corrigan says the public campaign against high ferry fares is keeping tourists away and could become “a self-fulfilling prophecy” that hurts coastal economies along with the ferry system they rely on.

“At some point in time it becomes almost a pile-on effect,” Corrigan told Coast Reporter in an hour-long interview last week in which he also defended the current BC Ferries business model.

Corrigan said he knows of potential tourists who are avoiding the coastal ferry system due to the negative publicity...

Gosh.

If the good Mr. Corrigan really wants to get some proMedia traction on this latest bit of shim-sham-flimmy-flammy-jambalaya, perhaps he should call up the Keef and offer him a fun-filled plane ride to all the terminals in the realm rather than talking to folks like Mr. Gleeson.

Day Three is described by the Globe's Justine Hunter. Here is her lede:

BC Hydro is missing its energy conservation targets by a wide margin and may have to turn to private power producers to make up the difference, Energy Minister Bill Bennett said Thursday.

The Crown corporation spent $150-million last year on its annual program that is designed to persuade industrial, commercial and residential customers to reduce their energy demands. It is a critical part of BC Hydro’s long-term plans to meet the province’s future electricity requirements...

First, for some really good stuff on what's up in various and assorted ridings province-wide, check out proMedia guy Justin McElroy's amateur blog (it's kinda/sorta like McSushi Boy's place back in the old days). Today he's got a post up on the 13 ridings where anything could happen.

The following, on Vancouver South, is but one example of Mr. McElroy's insight and sense of humour:...Wai Young, who defeated Oscar Bluth Ujjal Dosanjh in the Conservatives’ only Vancouver win in 2011, faces a tough battle against Harjit Sajjan, a lieutenant-colonel who also served on the Vancouver Police’s gang squad. This is one of those ridings the Liberals have pencilled in if they have any chance of forming government come October, and with no declared NDP or Green candidates yet, it could shape up into a de facto one-on-one battle with the CPC that would favour them.

Having said that, the effect of a nasty dispute over Sajjan’s nomination that went public late last year won’t be known until campaigning begins in earnest. And the riding has increasingly favoured right-wing candidates in municipal and provincial election...

And for those that won't real detail a good starting place is the Port Moody-Coquitlam Election 2015 blog. It's a bland name, but a most interesting hunka hunka burnin' notlove for all things Con, at least so far, in that riding.

_______Tip O' The Toque to Alison for the heads-up on the PoMoCoq blog.

Day One, courtesy Cassidy Olivier in The Province:Energy Minister Bill Bennett accused B.C. Hydro critic Adrian Dix of cherry-picking on Wednesday following claims by the NDP MLA that the number of employees at B.C. Hydro who are making more than $150,000 a year has more than tripled in the past decade...{snippety doo-dah}

... Bennett claimed Dix, whom he called “a very smart guy,” was “cherry-picking” figures. Bennett said Dix used 2006 as a starting point because that was the year that Bennett said the B.C. Transmission Corporation was folded into B.C. Hydro. That “jacked up” the global number of employees earning over $150,000 a year as of 2006, Bennett said...Day Two, also via Mr. Olivier:

...(Opposition Hydro critic Adrian) Dix said Wednesday the number of employees at the Crown corporation and its subsidiaries making that amount or more had tripled in the past decade, from about 220 in 2006 to just under 700 in fiscal 2014. The bulk of that increase was in middle management, Dix added.

Bennett replied that Dix was using 2006 as a starting point because that’s when the B.C. Transmission Corporation (BCTC) was folded back into B.C. Hydro. In reality, the BCTC wasn’t folded back into B.C. Hydro until 2010, at which time about 100 employees earning $150,000 were added to the payroll.

“I made a mistake,” Bennett told The Province on Thursday...

I guess that's what the good Mr. Bennett, who some say is a 'very smart guy', call's 'bringin' it'.

________Of course, we're still waiting to hear if the Wizards of Clarklandia are going to invoke their lightning rod of total logic and absolute reason destruction deflector spin strate(r)gy by replacing Mr. Bennett as energy minister with the good Mr. Virk.Don't know about you, but I kinda think the proMedia herd might have turned a little over the past week...More on that to come.

Premier Christy Clark says she’s confident her government can ink a new deal with Peace River-region municipalities on oil and gas revenue, even as her self-imposed deadline looms and negotiations are at an impasse with some communities.

Clark brushed aside skepticism Wednesday over whether she can settle a new “Fair Share” agreement with northeast municipalities to provide grants in lieu of property taxes from the oil and gas sector. She likened the dispute with some northeast mayors to the contentious provincial teachers strike last year.

“We’d like to get to an agreement as soon as we can, to settle things,” the premier said at the legislature...

But, as you might expect, there is a kicker hiding in the happy talk for the folks that actually live in Northeastern BC:

...Clark’s optimism contrasts with the outlook of the Fort St. John and District of Taylor mayors, who have refused to sign any new deal and questioned why the government is trying to replace the existing fair share agreement with a new one that will mean millions of dollars less for the region.

Fort St. John Mayor Lori Ackerman travelled to the legislature this week to try and convince Community Development Minister Coralee Oakes to pause negotiations and honour the existing fair share deal, which doesn’t expire until 2020. She said Oakes wasn’t receptive...

So.

Why, exactly, are the Clarklandians doing this?

Well...

...The government has said the current funding formula, which grows at the rate of the oil and gas industry, isn’t affordable for a province that has seen natural gas revenues decline 80 per cent since 2005....

In case you've forgotten, the Jericho lands on Lotusland's far western edge are up for sale.

And while the province once claimed it would consult with local residents about the deal those same locals (at least the ones that live a little further east, in Kits) went out and voted for a guy named Eby.

So now, according to the words of the very fine Minister for all things Clarkland, Mr. Amrik Virk, at least, there will be no consultation.

Glen McGregor has the details in a recent O'Cit piece on super secret changes the Order of Canada process announced/not announced in yesterday's budget:...(The Harper) government chose an unusual way of handing out medals to mark the...(60th)...anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, by delegating the selection process for recipients, in part, to trade associations, lobby organizations and other non-governmental groups dubbed “partner organizations.”...

Go figure.

______I'm pretty sure there was a typo in Mr. McGregor's copy which said that this was a medal for the 50th anniversary of Lizzie's ascension...However, he then goes on to talk about a couple of most interesting recipients with ties to either the Harper government of HGov-related ideology...That and the fact that there is no mention of 'partner organizations' in the government description of the arbiters of the 50th anniversary medals handed out in 2002.And believe me, I could have plugged worse lyrics into the sub-header from the then young and non lucre-laden Mr. Lydon and company.

After running through three demonstrative examples where it appears to be clear that specific government documents existed when responses to FOI requests told the opposition that they did not, Mr. Leyne of the Victoria Times Colonist wrote the following:

...The working theory from the NDP is that government has adopted the widespread practice of claiming important records don’t exist. “No records” is the new “no comment.”

But that’s not exactly news. A national survey a year ago turned up a similar conclusion. And FOI law is a background issue that doesn’t really move too many people.

What’s also in play is the NDP’s penchant for getting (BC Liberal Minister Amrit) Virk up on his feet during question period...

Gosh.

That sounds an awful lot like column writing by polling in which things that really do matter are subsequently waved away with the 'it's just raw politics, anyway' coup de grace.

Both of which got reader Merv Adey righteously ticked.

So much so that he sent the following letter to the VTC's editor:...Re "NDP Eager to put Virk on Hot Seat", your columnist does journalism no favors when he minimizes the revelations brought forward by the NDP in the Legislature Monday April 20th.

As he notes, the NDP sought information from multiple sources within government, notably from a gentleman named Nick Facey who worked for Amrik Virk during the height of the scandal around Kwantlen College executive compensation. I dryly note Virk was forced to admit he had "forgotten" that he was involved in efforts to skirt the compensation rules when he was a board member at Kwantlen.

So the NDP asked for emails from Facey during that time. "No Records" was the response. But the emails did turn up, largely blacked out as cabinet advice, from the Minister's files. There are other examples from Hansard that day.

Leyne claims that the FOI issue doesn't move many people, and governments across the country , what, routinely lie to FOI requesters? I'm not sure I understood him. But if I were to assert that our Press Gallery is content to fill the newspaper pages with gossip from the golf course, rather than digging for factual information, and that the Press Gallery found this nonsense acceptable from gvernments, people would be mighty upset.

The Freedom of Information and Privacy Act protects our democratic institutions by forcing governments to inform us of what they are up to. It's a damn shame Leyne doesn't find a government routinely evading the act more appalling...

No word yet on whether or not Mr. Adey's letter has been published by said editor.

_______To give non-partisanish 'weight' to the serial government obfuscations that have effectively hidden important information from the public about how their government is run, independent MLA Vicki Huntington chimed in as well.And, of course, the crashing trees that Mr. Leyne decided not to mention in his column? Well, if he'd told his readers about things like that they just might come to the crazy conclusion that the BC Liberal government does, in fact, have a track record of making sure the public doesn't find out what it's really up to....Crashing trees like, say, the ancient douglas fir known around these here parts as the 'Dobell Doctrine' that was later bookended by the third growth hemlock called the 'Dyble (non) Investigation'....

And yesterday Mr. Woodford spoke to the manager of the Jericho Sailing Club, Mike Cotter, and got his take on the situation:...Mike Cotter says James Moore and other BC Tory MPs are being fed misinformation from Coast Guard brass who say Kits Base wouldn’t have been a factor in the English Bay fuel spill response.

“I know it to be absolutely false. I witnessed them responding to spills. I was familiarized with the environmental emergency response equipment they had. I was onboard there vessel. They had a dedicated pollution response vessel.”

Cotter says the logs and records from Kits Base should be made public.

“They will clearly show that, that vessel was based there. They will clearly show the crews had training. The ships logs will also show they responded to spills.”

Cotter says The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Coast Guard Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner are lying when they say Kits Base had no pollution response equipment and would not have been a factor in the fuel spill response...

Because if Mr. Stone thinks that evasion tactics like the following, in response to a question about the need to repair retaining walls on the still-pretty-darned-new Sea-To-Sky (super-secret) Tollway, are going to be the end of it...

...Today NDP transportation critic Claire Trevena brought up the most recent repair in the legislature, asking why repairs are needed on what is essentially a brand new highway and asked the Minister of Transportation Todd Stone to submit the safety reports/audit of the retaining walls.

Minister Stone advised at times mitigative work is done on all corridors in the province and completely- and quite shamefully- evaded her questions on the safety/inspection reports by talking about how the NDP opposed many projects in the province!...

From Mr. Palmer's report on privacy commissioner Denham's pushback on Bill 20, the thing that would, as currently written, give names, ranks and serial numbers of voters to political parties in the VSun:

...“This information could only be used for an electoral purpose, and misuse of such information would be an offence. Government believes that there are sufficient safeguards in the Election Act and does not intend to withdraw the amendment.”...

Now, just to be very clear here, the statement above comes from the BC Liberal Governnment of one Christy Clark.

Because, according to the good Mr. Palmer at least, Ms. Always Campaigning is on the case:

...Attorney General Suzanne Anton seized on Denham’s fallback position, namely her willingness to work with chief electoral officer Keith Archer on regulatory protections against abuse of the information...

Feel better now?

_______And, just in case you have forgotten, it was the good Mr. Palmer himself who told us, in a column last fall, that that hatched plan mentioned above, and I quote, "did not prove to be a decisive issue in the campaign itself"....Gosh, I can't imagine why that 'proved' to be the case....I mean, maybe if he and his had set-up a 'war room' or something, things might have turned out a little bit differently....Especially if, say, they had found a certain Email that was so effectively tucked away by the Premier's minion's 'investigation' until AFTER the election.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Longtime reader, and oft-times Twittmachine wurlitzer of goings on round here, Merv Adey, points out on Facebook that something significant happened in the Ledge during question period earlier today.

Given that you probably won't see or hear about this on local newscasts we thought we'd bring Merv's message to you by way of the bloggodome:

In question period today, BCLiberal cabinet minister Virk is nailed for hiding the existence of public documents. The NDP tabled briefing notes the govt denied existed, emails the govt denied existed. Much was redacted as "advice to cabinet" which is fair enough, but if those emails were deleted by the sender, Nick Facey, who was involved in reviewing Mr. Virk's role in a salary scandal at Kwantlen College? Then Nick Facey may have breached the Freedom of Information Act.

It seems like our provincial govt is involved in serial, intentional cover ups. But the reporters on the TeeVee news still quote their press releases as fact.

Check the Hansard link above and scroll down to Question Period. It really is unbelievable...

Surprised?

________Background on what went down at Kwantlen, for context, can be found...Here....And...Here.

So, given that, does anybody have any tips on how to play a super low-strung vertically-oriented guitar while screaming and twirling at the same time?

Don F?

Scotty?

****

Man.

I sure hope no one mentions The Pixies anytime soon.

________All joking aside, Time Bomb is a straight-up, super infectious tune to mess around with no matter how you do it...And, while I'm not sure Mr. Beer 'N Hockey would agree, it almost seems like a Post-Hip-Hop-A-Lyptical westcoast-destylized version of Springsteen's New York City Serenade, at least from a lyrical POV....But don't quote me on that in Greasy Lake circles whatever you do....Interestingly, Rancid's front man Tim Armstrong/Timebomb, who is on the front porch of geezerhood himself now, is still up to some most interesting DIY stuff on the side, a lot of which you can find....Here.And, in the interest of full disclosure...We lived right up the street from where the two then young Armstrong's, Tim and that other guy, as well their two crews were honing their craft in the Berkeley flats as kids back in the early '90's...But as a junior science geek with a then newly born tiny e. in tow I really had no idea what was truly going on at 924 Gilman on the other side of San Pablo at the time.

It never ceases to amaze me how, if you just pay attention, you can see the real and true failures of BC Liberals coming from miles and miles and miles away..

And I'm not just talking about the cronification of everything.

Instead, I'm talking about the ideologically-driven policy failures.

This time I'm specifically talking about the original Brownian/Campbellerian plan to get public housing off the public's back by selling all the public housing land to private developers to generate capital.

Which is exactly what the executor of the original plan, Rich Coleman, did with all that land at the foot of Little Mountain in Lotsuland's near Eastern Townships almost a decade ago now.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman celebrated last week’s official opening of 53 units of seniors’ housing on Vancouver’s Little Mountain as “a milestone” and “a rebirth of a community.”

But a better description of the long-stalled redevelopment of Vancouver’s largest social housing site might be a disgrace or, at very least, an embarrassment to the province and the city.

Far from addressing the enormous problem of housing affordability in Canada’s most expensive city, the province’s sale of the Little Mountain site may have exacerbated it.

No one knows when — or even if — the site will be fully redeveloped. Yet, even if it is fully redeveloped, the net gain may be as few as 10 social housing units and, at most, 60.

For 50 years, the site that stretches from 33rd Avenue to 37th between Main and Ontario streets had 234 units that provided affordable housing to families and seniors.

Eight years ago, the first tenants began moving out with a promise that they would have first right of refusal when new units were completed in 2010.

BC Housing had sold the property for $300 million to Holborn Properties on the condition that it build 234 new units of social housing and an additional 10 for Musqueam band members. Fewer than a quarter have been built.

The old homes were demolished even though Holborn has yet to gain approval from the city for the redevelopment...

Gosh.

If it was only lemonade stands that these people can't run...

We might not be in such trouble.

________Funny thing about Big Rich's big plans for public housing....Back in the days when he was still running with Mr. Coleman, the CTF's man against transit mega-projects (who was, of course, for them before he was against them) Mr. Jordan Bateman used to argue with folks on various and sundry comment threads (back in the day the then Langley Township Councillor was a blogger too) about how Big Rich was going to transform everything for the better if we would just give him the chance...The real kicker in Ms. Brahman's piece is the fact that Big Rich's original sell-off deal included no increase in actual public housing units despite the fact that the actual density of the planned private build up was something on the order of a seven fold increase...The City of Vancouver is actually trying to address that in its permitting process...Again, another epic fail for the Martyn Brown/Gordon Campbell doctrine of 'privatize everything!'

Essentially, this is the story of a young kid who met Mitchell on the island of Crete at the end of the sixties whose first name is Car(e)y and who she once described as her 'Mean Old Daddy'.

It's a great read for all kinds of reasons, including for the anecdotes about Ms. Mitchell's songwriting process and the stories about just how different the world was for carefree kids who wanted to travel the world on a shoestring back then.

And now, thanks to the initial digging and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests of Bob Mackin and the follow-up work of Laila Yuile we know that even the contract extensions of the Flack-Hackery are untendered and, essentially undefined:

...The FOI on this contract is rather open-ended,with few concrete deliverable in place other than what is dictated in the Schedule A ( pg 8) and a proposal letter sent from Counterpoint to Translink VP Bob Paddon in June of 2014 ( Pg 9)

The timeframe for the original contract was June 2014 – December 2014 for $70,000 fees and &4,000 expenses.

An amendment to that contract was signed December 31st,2015 ( pg 15) extending the contract to July 31st 2015, for an additional $100,000 dollars.

Perhaps folks should start asking them of Counterpoint principals Bob Ransford and Bruce Rozenhart the next time they bump into them on the Twittmachine.

______And here's something that, in my opinion at least, doesn't get said enough...Which is that this plebiscite thingy is non-binding...In the interests of showing our work....Previous posts on Counterpoint's 'contract' can be found....Here....and....Here.

To his credit Les Leyne of the VTC has partially unburied a lede on the Clarklandian Crown Asset Sales Bonanza by writing about the leaked Emails that indicate both the speed at which this was (and presumably still is being) done and why:...In a note from June 2013, a month after the election, to a team tasked with selling a parcel directly behind the legislature buildings, an official said that to be part of the sale and development “is a once in a lifetime opportunity. An opportunity that normally would warrant years of planning and preparation.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have unlimited time — our goal is to have For Sales up by Oct. 31 with sale proceeds in the bank by March 31 [of the next year].”....

{snip}

...Another email read into the record was from an assistant deputy minister, written in May 2013, just days after the election. It was addressed to dozen officials charged with asset sales across government. It makes crystal-clear what various cabinet ministers are having trouble this week confessing. “As you are aware, asset sales is a key initiative for the government to balance the budget in fiscal 2013/14. The fiscal plan includes a net gain of $350 million from this initiative this year which we are collectively committed to achieve.”...

But here's the thing.

When it comes to the big sales atBurke Mountain, which Mr. Leyne talks about specifically as well, there is not one mention of who actually bought most of the land for, as the buyer claimed yesterday, 'fair market value'.

Premier Christy Clark says there are no plans to phase out the daily prayer that opens each sitting of the legislature.

This after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled a municipality in Quebec can no longer open its meetings with prayers, as the state must remain neutral on religion...

Next, as also recorded by Mr. Leslie, the 'Salading':

...“You know the thing in British Columbia is, the prayer is sometimes it’s a prayer that’s completely non-religious. Sometimes it does refer to God or Allah or Jehovah, or any of the other names that people use for God.” (said Clark)...

________And just so you know, it would appear that the good Mr. Leslie kinda/sorta sees a method in Ms. Clark's madness salad given that he ends his piece with the following: "In fact, some MLA’s who deliver the daily prayer don’t mention God at all."....Hmmmm...I wonder if Mr. Leslie though to ask any of those MLA's if they did that on purpose to, for example, make a point?.

In March 2014, Wesbild purchased 370 acres of land in the Burke Mountain area of Coquitlam via a competitive and public tender process administered by Colliers International on behalf of the Province of British Columbia. Our firm submitted a bid for 14 of the 21 parcels that were on offer, and we were the successful bidder for these lands. We paid fair market value and fully stand by the integrity of this transaction.

Wesbild has also participated in other provincial land sale competitions in British Columbia with unsuccessful bids.

Fair market value on all 14 parcels that the very fine Wesbild bid on?

Gosh.

Does that mean that Wesbild knows what all the other bids were?

And, more to the point, I suppose, is a question we have for the fine Clarklandian minister responsible, the good Mr. Virk.

...Elections are best left to election time. Takes a lot of steam to build up enough pressure for people, in their masses, to change a government. Recall campaigns allow some of that steam to blow off.

_______Just in case you've forgotten...There really was a Dipper 'Waffle' faction back in the good ol' days.And, for the record....In a fit of stupid, couldn't stop myself from hashtagging a theme on the Twittmachine last night after I got home and should have been working on Geezer Rock cover tunes instead...Honestly thought that one of my better ones was #JustinWouldRatherWorkWithHolly Golightly, not Audrey McLaughlin...As you might imagine no one, not even executors of Truman Capote's estate, cared.

The Vancouver school board decided to audit itself and soon thereafter the Clarklandian Minister responsible for privatizing all learning in British Columbia, Mr. Peter Fassbender, announced his own audit of the VSB.

“Neither I nor the ministry team were aware prior to our announcement of the special adviser that Vancouver had made an in-camera decision, which was in camera and happened the Tuesday before the Thursday that I made the announcement.”

...Fassbender also said that upon learning of the Vancouver school board’s contract with Price Waterhouse Coopers, he offered to “pay any cancellation charges that they may have incurred or would incur in cancelling the review that they had done”.

“I did that for a very specific reason. They are not the same review,” Fassbender also said...

In other words, Mr. Fassbender was going to get what he wanted no matter what.

Which just further demonstrates what a sham-of-a-shamified shim-sham-shimmy is going down here.

Less than three weeks ago, a 2,100 ft² house on a 3,350 ft² lot in east Vancouver sold for $2.2 million though the asking price was $1.6 million. Two weeks ago, a modest 60-year-old home near my North Vancouver residence sold for $1 million, also above the asking price. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said February sales were 20% above the 10-year sales average for the month and the average price for a single family detached property in Metro Vancouver is over a million dollars. Houses are routinely selling 100 to 200 thousand above asking price.

In other words, the residential real estate market in urban British Columbia is hot, hot, hot. In the Burke Mountain area, small building lots are listed over $600,000. Yet, the Province of British Columbia made a hurried deal to sell vast tracts of residential property at a fraction of appraised values. The buyer is a company controlled by Hassan Khosrowshahi, a large BC Liberal contributor. The responsible Minister? None other than Amrik Virk who was party to a scheme that demonstrated minimal dedication to protecting taxpayers' financial interests...

When the B.C. Liberals set out before the last election to balance the budget by selling off government landholdings, they dressed up the exercise as “release of surplus assets for economic generation.”

More like a “fire sale” said the Opposition New Democrats, and in the legislature this week they produced evidence to support that characterization in the case of one major asset sale in Metro Vancouver.

Early last year, the Liberals sold off 14 parcels of land in the Burke Mountain neighbourhood of the Tri-Cities area to a single developer for a combined price of $85 million.

On Tuesday, the New Democrats released a government-commissioned appraisal that estimated the properties could fetch as much as $128 million in the right circumstances.

The key consideration being that government maximize the potential bidders by offering the land for sale for up to nine months. Instead, the deal was rushed through in three months, according to supporting documentation provided by the NDP.

“What possibly went wrong?” Opposition leader John Horgan challenged at the outset of question period. “We had $128 million worth of property, and to meet your single-year budget objectives, you sold them for $43 million less than they were worth.”

Answering for the government was the cabinet member currently in charge of the asset disposal program, Citizens’ Services Minister Amrik Virk. Unhappily for the Liberals, one has to add, for if there’s a weaker link in the cabinet lineup, he or she has so far escaped general notice.

Nor did he fail to live down to those expectations Tuesday...

Surprised?

________And, for the record, the good Mr. Khosrowshahi's name shows up in graph #23 of Mr. Palmer's piece, which is the third from the bottom...Ledes buried and all that, right?And, just in case you were wondering, Mr. Leyne has his fun while he does his own burying too.

And finally...You may have noticed what I did there re: the local 'media'.

....Effective immediately and until further notice, the following portions of Area
28: Subareas 28-6 to 28-9 inclusive are closed to fishing for all shellfish and
groundfish species. This area includes those waters easterly of a line drawn
between Point Grey to Point Atkinson to the westerly side of the Lions Gate
Bridge.

This closure is in response to a fuel spill in English Bay on April 9, 2015 and
is a precautionary measure...

Given that all of the proMedia reports so far (at least the ones that I have seen) are, essentially, CP-based stenography I thought I'd go straight to the Dipper source on this one:

...The provincial government hired an independent appraiser in 2013 to determine the value of 14 publicly owned parcels of land in Coquitlam’s Burke Mountain neighborhood. In its detailed 137-page report, Equity Valuation and Consulting advised the government that these public assets would command a $128 million sale price if exposed to the markets for six to nine months.

But Clark’s ministers wouldn’t wait, and only weeks later began accepting offers at dramatically lower prices. Fourteen parcels were sold to the same buyer for only $85 million, fully $43 million less than the appraised value. The Clark Liberals parted with one 16-acre parcel, valued at $5.6 million, for only $100,000.

“The appraiser told the government to wait nine months and get a good price,” said Mike Farnworth, New Democrat MLA for Port Coquitlam. “But the Liberals threw the report to the wind and rushed to sell the land at a massive loss to the taxpayer just so they could pad their budget numbers.”

The purchaser of all 14 land parcels is Hassan Khosrowshahi of Wesbild Holdings Ltd. Khosromshahi and his companies have donated close to $1 million to the B.C. Liberal party since 2000, and a quarter of a million dollars just since the B.C. Liberals began their fire sale of public assets...

But.

Of course, you are sure to soon hear from the usual suspects that the good Mr. Khosromshahi has also given money to the socialist hordes.

So, no harm no foul, right?

Sure thing.

Except it turns out that, at least according to the Province's Cassidy Olivier on the Twittmachine the green handed out to the Dippers comes to a grand total of....

_______And anybody who is surprised by what went down on Burke Mountain re: the bogus balancing of the Clarklandian budget is forgetting what happened with a wee bit of asset-backed bait and switcherly switcherooing on the easterly downslope of Little Mountain awhile back.

It would appear that the wizards of Clarklandia have taken the full measure of the extended newscycle's longish tail and have decided, tentatively, that the way to make hay might just be to pivot and start paying attention to the bleatings of the unestablished and not-so credible idiots (i.e. bloggers).

To wit, this morning's story in the Globe from S. Dhillon and J. Hunter. Here is their lede:

British Columbia’s Environment Minister has accused the Canadian Coast Guard of a lack of leadership, saying it took the agency that was supposed to be in charge of an oil spill on Vancouver’s English Bay more than a day to assume control.

The spill, which occurred last Wednesday, has revealed potential gaps in the country’s marine-response system at a time when major pipeline projects that would dramatically increase tanker traffic along the West Coast are being hotly debated. It has also spurred a round of finger-pointing among three levels of government...

Which takes, us way back into the depths of time (i.e. yesterday) to see which way the wizards might go next if this ploy plays well with the plebes.

What the heckfire am I babbling on about this time?

Well, here is the key bit of foreshadowing from those misty mountainish and hoppy times, in the form of J. Hunter's piece from Sunday evening that hit the streets in dead tree version on Monday morning:

...Ms. (Christy) Clark has repeatedly warned that B.C. is not ready for additional oil tanker traffic, and had demanded that Ottawa reopen the Kitsilano Coast Guard base as a starting point...

Hmmmmm....

That's some emphatic statement there, the one about Ms. Clark's previous 'demand' that Ottawa re-open the Kitsilano CG base, don't you think?

Not sure I remember things going quite like that.

I mean, wasn't Ms. Clark essentially backed-into a corner by hordes of irate rubes before she finally said stuff like, say, the following:

...“When they get to the outcome (i.e. increased oil tanker traffic in and out of Burrard Inlet), it’s going to have to include making sure that Kits Coast Guard base is reopened, and the outcome is also going to have to include a beefed up Coast Guard response up and down the coast” ...

_______And why are we considering this latest move by the WizzesO'CLandia to be 'tentative', at least for the moment?...Well, if they were really sure that this is the right play we're pretty sure they would have had the word saladeer herself up there babbling on about it like, say, yesterday...Or even last Friday when she was still downplaying the loss of the Kits base in the schmozzle...And I suppose, to be fair, in addition to a bunch of idiot bloggers, the Wizzes might also be paying attention to the real investigative journalistic-type work of Shane Woodford of CKNW who has refused to buy into the FedCon's Pravda on The Rideau-type efforts to change the channel on this thing from the beginning.